Finally, M. de Gasparin denies that his researches are ‘superstitious’.  Will can move my limbs, if it also moves my table, what is there superstitious in that?  It is a new fact, that is all.  ‘Tout est si materiel, si physique dans les experiences des tables.’  It was not so at Toulouse!

Meanwhile M. de Gasparin, firm in his ’Trewth,’—­the need of a chaine of persons, the physical origin of the phenomena, the entire absence of spirits,—­was so unlucky, when he dealt with ‘spirits,’ as to drop into the very line of argument which he had been denouncing.  ‘Spirits’ are ’superstitious,’—­well, his adversaries had found superstition in his own experiments and beliefs.  To believe that spirits are engaged, is ’to reduce our relations with the invisible world to the grossest definition’.  But why not, as we know nothing about our relations with the invisible world?  The theology of the spirits is ‘contrary to Scripture’; very well, your tales of tables moved without contact are contrary to science.  ’No spiritualistic story has ever been told which is not to be classed among the phenomena of animal magnetism. . . . ’ This, of course, is a mere example of a statement made without examination, a sin alleged by M. de Gasparin against his opponents.  Vast numbers of such stories, not explicable by the now rejected theory of ’animal magnetism,’ have certainly been told.

In another volume M. de Gasparin demolished the tales, but he was only at the beginning of his subject.  The historical and anthropological evidence for the movement of objects without contact, not under his conditions, is very vast in bulk.  The modern experiments are sometimes more scientific than his own, and the evidence for the most startling events of all kinds is quite as good as that on which he relies for his prodigies, themselves sufficiently startling.  His hypothesis, at all events, of will directing a force or fluid, by no means explains phenomena quite as well provided with evidence as his own.  So M. de Gasparin disposes of the rival miracles as the result of chance, imposture, or hallucination, the very weapons of his scientific adversaries.  His own prodigies he has seen, and is satisfied.  His opponents say:  ‘You cannot register your force sur l’inclinaison d’une aiguille’.  He could not, but Home could do so to the satisfaction of a scientific expert, and probably M. de Gasparin would have believed it, if he had seen it.  M. de Gasparin is horrified at the idea of ‘trespassing on the territory of acts beyond our power’.  But, if it were possible to do the miracles of Home, it would be possible because it is not beyond our power.  ’The spiritualistic opinion is opposed to the doctrine of the resurrection:  it merely announces the immortality of the soul.’  But that has nothing to do with the matter in hand.